This article, published in Review of Communication 7, no. 1 (January 2007): 21-36, presents a research agenda for communication and terrorism studies, based on common interest in the formation and expression of Arab and Muslim identity.
I respond to Gerber's essay with skepticim, but agree that generic criticism can help reify the rhetorical tradition of public diplomacy for current and future practitioners.
Articulation of the purpose of inquiry delimits a subset of rhetorical theories that possess explanatory power, which in turn directs the analysis toward particular narrative methods appropriate to the analyst's task.
As an aid to scholars conducting literature reviews on the Global War on Terrorism, I provide here an annotated bibliography of works that address the symbolic construction of terrorism through discourse and subsequent rhetorical interactions.
In “Ritual, Strategy, and Deep Culture in the Chechen National Movement,” Hank Johnston creates common ground for cultural and rhetorical scholars interested in social movements, and proposes a common set of claims or heuristics for rhetorical and information analysts concerned with the origin and trajectory of nationalist movements.
Epistemological trends impacting science discourse call for a rhetorical rather than programmatic perspective. Managers of science diplomacy programs can make common cause with rhetorical critics who by their craft develop self-reflexivity and refine a moral sensibility toward both doxa and praxis.
Changes in orientation are required on the part of both rhetorical critics and officials who could benefit from their analyses, resulting what I have coined “actionable criticism,” that is, criticism which stretches itself toward an operational context.
Having attended conference panels on public diplomacy and having read a bit into the public diplomacy literature, it seems that we in academe have tended to blur the aims of public diplomacy writ large and the more specific counter-terrorism aim of winning the war of ideas. As our conversations on a public diplomacy field of research unfold, we can reframe our research questions to focus on reducing the hold of violent extremist ideologies while simultaneously broadening case studies of “how,” “what,” “who” to other regions of the world in which U.S. interests are at stake.
The benefits and uncertainties of new media accrue to both terrorist groups and the respondent public, affecting terrorist groups’ calculus in communicating threats.
This literature review offers one taxonomy and select findings of multi-disciplinary scholarship on the nature and structure of Arab, Muslim, and Islamic communities. The literature suggests four relational stages of identity expression: as an individual within a familial or kinship group; a citizen in relationship to a nation-state; an affiliate of a political and/or religious movement; and a member of a global community of believers. The vulnerability of individuals seeking belongingness and the operation of communities of violence are also acknowledged.
This literature review describes the linkages of visual rhetoric to moves within contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism. To make the discussion more concrete, essays which take as their focal points the genre of photojournalism, the Rosenthal Iwo Jima photo, images of 9/11, and the illustrations of Norman Rockwell receive particular attention.
In contrast to most civil society and non-govermental organizations pursuing instrumental goals and objectives, the World Social Forum is utopian in its form and function, suggesting a corollary change in approach by its government interlocutors.
This paper works employs Symbolic Convergence Theory within a comparative framework of the Cold War and Global War on Terrorism, to explore how Presidents Truman and Bush rhetorically expressed their world views through policy pronouncements.
A review of the literature on terrorist group proclivity toward the acquisition and use of WMD, prepared for the Fund for Peace Threat Convergence Research Program.
Previous scholarship in the communications discipline, supplemented by policy and program recommendations contained in governmental and independent reports on public diplomacy reform, offer a broad outline for future application of rhetorical-critical theory and criticism.
In “Networks of Terror: Theoretical Assumptions and Pragmatic Consequences” (Communication Theory 17, 2007: 93-124), Stohl & Stohl move analysis from a mechanistic to contextualist frame to better assess message flow through space and time.
Erik Nemeth introduces to the terrorism studies literature the field of cultural security, defined as the unique intersection of issues in art, politics, and counterterrorism. Working from the assumption that we live in a symbolically constituted world, rhetorical scholarship would argue that cultural security is a unique proposition deserving focused study and elaboration.
A permeable and dynamic web of evolving social networks offers a more useful construct for the public expression of private thought.
Symbolic analysis of terrorist and hate groups'online presence can offer insight on the process by which their Internet and web-based communications constitute and influence multiple audiences.
Rhetorical scholarship versed in feminist criticism can make a significant contribution to our understanding of and efforts to combat suicide terrorism.
Roger Stahl charts the border-crossing of video games between military and civilian spheres alongside attendant discourses of war.
How contemporary rhetorical theorists have asserted themselves on the locus of truth not only binds contemporary rhetorical theory in the assumption of a symbolically constituted world, but also distinguishes some of the key moves within the theoretical framework. In this essay, we start with the confrontational, turn to the conciliatory, and make our way back to the middle.
Gordon R. Mitchell applies argumentation theory to the intelligence analysis process, comparing the original 1976 Team B exercise and the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission report on ballistic missile threats.
Resisting the temptation to interject our own views of what al-Jazeera is and should be, communication and media scholars have added value in the study of the network’s characteristics— its content, verbal and visual news frames, news functions, and journalistic ethos, as well as its audience reach, uses, and effects.
This trio of articles in the Spring 2007 issue of Terrorism and Political Violence offer independent views on the function of myth and mythology, suggesting a future role for meta-analyses using rhetorical-critical approaches.
The inability of “terrorism as a virus” to compete successfully with the “war on terrorism” metaphor poses a methodological challenge for the rhetorical critic.
In their Foreign Policy essay “Why Hawks Win,” Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon draw on prospect theory, gain and loss frames, and heuristics and biases to explain why doves have the higher burden of proof in perennial debates on use of force.